St. Dale

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Karen nodded. He was probably right about that. Maybe in the beginning, when he was still a raw high school dropout from a mill town, maybe then Earnhardt would have been surprised to have fans among the wine-and-cheese people. But not later. President Reagan was in the stands when he won the Daytona 500. And the year Earnhardt died, he was on a list of the country’s richest people. Compared to that level of success, Terence Palmer, for all his airs and graces, was a shoe-shine boy.

  “So, how come you’re here then?” she said.

  He was silent for a few moments. Karen thought that maybe they didn’t ask personal questions in his crowd. At last though, he said, “My dad died.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I am, too, but only because I missed the chance to know him. My folks split up when I was a baby.”

  Karen nodded. There was a lot of that going around. Then she smiled. “For a second there, I thought maybe you were Kerry Earnhardt.”

  Terence considered it. “No,” he said. “He looks a lot like his dad-at least in the photos. I think I’m probably taller. My dad bought tickets for this tour, and I came in his place.”

  “I guess you want to know why I’m here,” said Karen.

  He studied her for a moment, and Karen squirmed, wishing she had worn something dressier than jeans. “Not really,” he said. “You got married at the Speedway. I figure this is your thing.”

  Something in the way he said it made Karen want to deny all interest in motor sports, but she thought that doing so might be disloyal to Shane, who hadn’t a trace of irony in his soul, and who had been so proud and happy to make this pilgrimage. “Yes,” she said. “Our thing. I guess it is. I’m just trying to figure out what comes next.”

  Again, the silence. Terence was looking over at Shane, who was sleeping with his mouth open and his head thrown back against the seat. Fifty years of tuna casserole, he seemed to be thinking.

  Karen squirmed in her seat. “Don’t sell us short,” she said. “We may be young, and we didn’t get a fancy education, either one of us, but neither did Dale, and he did all right.” But Dale knew where he was going, she thought. And she didn’t.

  Dale Earnhardt, Incorporated was on the schedule for the early afternoon, but the first stop of the day would be a location farther north than Mooresville: the museum of North Carolina’s other seven-time champion, Richard Petty.

  Highway 220 south of Greensboro was a four-lane corridor cut through forests of longleaf pines. Once they crossed into Randolph County, official state highway signs directed motorists to Exit 113, which led to the small town of Randleman, home of the Richard Petty Museum, a newly constructed one-story brick building fronted by a white arched portico. The place looked as if it had been designed by a firm of architects who specialized in branch banks. It sat back from Academy Street behind a bank-sized visitor parking lot with only a decorous sign to identify the building as a museum.

  Terence Palmer peered out the window, studying the scene with a puzzled frown. “Odd,” he said to Sarah Nash. “It looks so dignified. I was expecting an outside display of cars, checkered flags, neon displays, sort of a circus atmosphere.”

  She sighed. “That’s Manhattan talking,” she said. “I don’t know a single driver in NASCAR who wouldn’t crawl under his car and not come out if you tried to show him off in the outlandish way you imagined. They’re not showy people. Mostly not, anyhow.”

  Justine, camera in hand, was the first one off the bus. “Anybody who wants to pose outside the Richard Petty Museum, put your caps on, and bunch up over by the door,” she said, waving the other passengers into place, while Ratty parked the bus, and Harley headed inside to arrange admittance for the bus tour.

  Cayle obligingly joined the posing group under the white covered porch at the glass-fronted doors of the building. It was an unassuming place, she thought, considering that the museum was dedicated to a man whose nickname was “The King.” It looked like a museum that had come into being by popular demand; not to make money-admission was a nominal five bucks-but to accommodate the kindness of strangers. Cayle imagined a steady stream of Richard Petty fans over the years, arriving in the little North Carolina village in search of their idol, because after years of watching him race, they felt like family. They would be wanting to see something in commemoration of the legendary driver, and hoping to leave with a picture of the 43 car, a tee shirt, a postcard, or Richard Petty’s name scrawled on a napkin. Anything. They would have wanted to pose for pictures of themselves with the most famous face in racing: Richard Petty, whippet-thin, with his big cowboy hat and boots, his palm-sized belt buckle, and the sunglasses obscuring that hawk-billed face. And always a smile like winter sunshine. Cayle pictured an endless procession of shy, but determined race fans. Just one more picture, Mr. Petty! It’s for Grandad who couldn’t come with us. Can you sign this napkin?

  So, finally, a kind but busy man with an empire to run had despaired of getting any work done with the endless stream of visitors, and he arranged for the fans to have a place to go. He converted an old furniture store into a showroom to house some stuff he thought visitors would like to see-like seven championship trophies, Chrysler Hemi engines, a selection of his race cars from over the years, and pictures of the man himself, posing with movie stars and presidents. He hired some local people to run it. Five bucks to get in-that ought to cover the light bill and the clerks’ wages, and whatnot. Then The King went back to all the other million things that clamored for his time.

  The Number Three Pilgrims filed into the museum, which on a weekday morning wasn’t crowded, and Cayle’s impression of a homey and unassuming visitor center was confirmed. Here, she thought, was the museum equivalent of making your mashed potatoes and pork chops stretch to feed a crowd of unexpected dinner guests. A line of race cars, each surrounded by a knee-high picket fence led the visitor down memory lane, a reminder that Richard Petty was truly a king in the dynastic sense: that is, he was just one cog in a long succession. Four generations of Pettys had driven the NASCAR circuit, an amazing achievement in a sport just over fifty years old.

  Bekasu studied the framed photographs that lined the walls. “Here’s a picture of Lee Petty, when he was racing back in the fifties,” she remarked to Harley, who was reading over her shoulder. “Having a father in the business must have helped young Richard get started.”

  “I guess it did,” said Harley. “It’s just-” He shook his head and started to walk away.

  “Just what?” said Bekasu, hurrying to keep up with him. “Nobody else is listening. What were you going to say?”

  Harley turned back to study Lee Petty’s old race car from the fifties-truly a stock car, one that its owner could have driven to the race track, on the race track, and then to the grocery store afterward. Not like today’s seven-hundred-horsepower monsters with the paste-on headlights, the treadless tires and glassless windows, and the doors permanently welded shut. Seeing that old car reminded Harley of his own father’s obsession with racing. The self-made man back in the early days before engineers and wind tunnels and product placement-those old-time drivers had done it all, and all the money they’d spent on those cars wouldn’t buy you a fist-sized decal’s worth of advertisement on the last-place driver’s trunk in today’s sport.

  “Racing was almost a one-man operation in the old days,” he told her. “Lee Petty would have worked on this car himself. Modified it. Tested it. Driven it in races in whatever time he could steal from a day job and a wife and kids. And Lee Petty won the first ever Daytona 500, you know. Daytona. Can you imagine the incredible force of will it would have taken to succeed under those circumstances? How much you would have to want to win?”

  “Oh, men always want to win,” said Bekasu, still looking at the genial face of Lee Petty. The determination must have been buried beneath that affable exterior. “Men can’t even lose jurisdiction over the remote control for the television. I don’t see why racing should be any more cutthroat than, say
, a law practice, which is my family’s profession.”

  “Well, maybe it isn’t,” said Harley. “We don’t have any lawyers in my family and I try to avoid them, myself. But I do know about fathers and sons in the racing business. It would put you in mind of a deer herd. The young buck may have been sired by the old stag, but that doesn’t mean the father is going to step down to his successor without a fight. I’ll tell you a story about the young Richard Petty. When he was first starting out, summer of 1958 that would have been, he drove up to Canada to compete in his first Grand National race. So there’s Richard, a few pounds heavier back then, but short on experience, whizzing around the track but a lap back from the front runners, when all of a sudden two cars come up on him-Cotton Owens is driving one, and Lee Petty is driving the other. Slam! Two old pros battling it out, and young Richard can’t get out of their way fast enough, so he gets knocked aside as they go past, and he goes into the wall. Guess who put him there?”

  “Not his father?”

  “None other. The old man won the championship that year, and flat nobody was going to stand in his way.”

  “But that’s terrible!-Maybe he didn’t realize it was his son that he hit.”

  Harley shrugged. “I’d have an easier time believing that if there wasn’t an even better story about them. Richard Petty’s first NASCAR win came the next summer, 1959, at the old Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta. But the victory was taken away from him when one of the other drivers, upset about some infraction or other, protested the outcome of the race. Guess who cost Richard his first win.”

  Bekasu stared. “His father?”

  Harley nodded.

  “Well…maybe there was a good reason for it,” she said. She couldn’t think of one. “Maybe he wanted Richard to learn racing the hard way.”

  “Maybe old Lee hoped that Richard would quit and go to law school.” Harley laughed. “No, that’s not true. Racing was always the family business. I don’t think Richard Petty considered any other career for more’n five minutes.”

  “I still bet Lee Petty was sorry about putting Richard into the wall when he realized the other driver was his son.”

  “That’s for sure. Lee was the car owner. Every dent he put in the car that Richard was driving would have to be fixed with money coming out of his own pocket.”

  Bekasu shook her head. “Poor Richard Petty.” She had begun to picture The King as a sooty waif in a Dickens novel.

  “Richard Petty wouldn’t see it that way,” Harley said. “There’s a saying on the track: ‘Rubbin’ is racin’.’ Dale Earnhardt lived by that motto. You’ve heard it?”

  “Yes,” said Bekasu. “But what on earth does it mean?”

  “It means that there’s more to competing than just driving a car at high speeds around an oval. There’s conflict with your opponents-that’s the rubbing. Bashing somebody out of your way so that you can win.”

  “Your stag metaphor again, huh? Locking horns.”

  “Right. It’s all part of the deal. Richard Petty knew that, and if he couldn’t handle the roughness back then, he’d have had no business in the sport.” Harley turned to look at the line of trophy cases, glinting gold in the fluorescent lighting. “But he turned out all right, didn’t he?”

  Cayle and Justine had wandered to the back of the museum, where case after case of belt buckles were on display, and behind that was a room full of floor-to-ceiling glass shelves, housing The King’s gazillion pocketknives and the doll collection of Mrs. Richard Petty.

  “I used to have that one!” Justine declared, pointing to a round-faced Madame Alexander storybook doll. “Got it for Christmas when I was nine.”

  “I’ll bet this freed up a lot of space for them at home,” murmured Cayle, surveying the size of the two collections.

  “I’ll bet their fans just eat this up,” said Justine. “Richard Petty’s stuff. It’s like getting to go upstairs and peek in your hosts’ bedrooms. These exhibits are good for the wives and kids, too. I mean, if somebody in your family is bored spitless by racing, but on the vacation they get dragged to this shrine for Richard Petty, why, the non-race fan can come back here and look at the pretty dolls and the fancy belt buckles, while the menfolk are drooling over the race car exhibits.”

  “Speaking of stuff,” said Cayle. “I just had a cute idea for the newlyweds. I think we ought to get them a wedding present. So what if we all take turns buying them a coffee mug from every museum and speedway we visit? I bought a mug in Martinsville, so I can give them that.”

  Justine considered it. “You think she’d like NASCAR mugs better than Royal Doulton?”

  “I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive, Justine. Shall we do it?”

  “Sure. I’ll pass the word,” said Justine. “Oh, look! A Prince Charles and Princess Diana! Aren’t they adorable?”

  Cayle sighed. “I wonder if Princess Diana has a Richard Petty doll in her museum at Althorp,” she muttered.

  “Nope,” said Justine. “I went there last summer. It’s just dresses and old pictures-stuff like that. This is much more interesting.”

  Terence Palmer and Sarah Nash stood at the knee-high picket fence surrounding Adam Petty’s tricycle, which was parked beside Adam Petty’s multicolored race car. Terence thought that the 45 car, a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, looked quite appropriate parked beside a tricycle, because its flamboyant paint scheme suggested that it had been designed by a kindergartener with crayons. The car’s roof and doors were shamrock green, its hood a royal blue, and the bumpers bright red. Various sponsor decals in yellow and white lettering and the 45 on the sides and roof in buttercup yellow gave the car a festive air, as if it ought to have been a parade float instead of a race car. It seemed strange to think that someone so young, driving such an exuberantly colored car, should have died.

  “The tricycle is a nice touch,” said Sarah Nash. “It reminds you that the drivers are just ordinary people, not superheroes in firesuits.”

  “Seeing his car here in his grandfather’s museum makes me feel that I missed something,” said Terence. “Not family exactly. My childhood was fine. I know people hate it when privileged people complain, and honestly, I’m not. I think what I’m lacking is a sense of continuity. Look at Adam here: the fourth generation in the same family business. It seems to me that he could share much more with his father and grandfather than most people.”

  “It’s rare, though, that kind of closeness.” Sarah Nash gave him an appraising stare. “You’re not about to tell me you wish you’d gone into farming with your father instead of being a tycoon in New York?”

  “Hardly a tycoon,” Terence said quickly. “More like one cog in a big machine. And after all the education and training I’ve had, it would be a waste to walk away from that. No, I don’t think I’d have any aptitude for farming-or for stock car racing,” he added, nodding toward the car. “I just think it would be nice to feel like a part of something that started before you were born and will continue after you’re gone. Do you think my dad felt that way about his farm?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” said Sarah Nash. “We never talked about it. I know that he enjoyed living there. It could have been no more than that. He wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to do anything you didn’t want to do, just out of some misguided sense of family tradition. And if you threw away a high-paying job to go broke farming in Wilkes County, he’d have called you a fool.”

  “I used to wonder why he didn’t come and see me when I was a kid,” said Terence. “Why he didn’t try to forge a relationship with me. Do you know why he stayed away?”

  “I think so,” said Sarah Nash. “During his last illness, there were days when he was in quite a lot of pain, and I’d go and sit with him. Once I said that I’d be tempted to take an overdose of the painkiller just to get the suffering over with, but you know what Tom said? He smiled at me-as much as he could smile, hurting as bad as he did-and he said, ‘I can’t do that, Sarah. I’ve got too much mountain blood in me to
kill myself. Mountain people never go where they haven’t been invited.’”

  Terence nodded, and they walked on to the next exhibit. No, Tom Palmer had certainly not been invited to visit his son. He was sure that had he turned up on the doorstep, his mother would have been gracious about it, but Terence knew that without so much as a harsh word or a raised eyebrow, she could make people feel profoundly out of place, so that they took the first opportunity to flee and never come back. He wasn’t sure how she managed it, and his two old girlfriends from his high school days who had been thus exiled would never explain to him exactly what had happened.

  The truth was, he hadn’t made any effort to contact his father, either, but he told himself that he’d had no way of knowing whether his father had wanted to see him or not. Terence had always preferred to do without rather than to risk rejection.

  Bill Knight had wandered up, reading the label on each exhibit, as if he were going to be tested on the material. “I really must get some postcards to send back to Canterbury,” he told them. “So many folks up there would love to come and see this. Well, this is a colorful car-practically a Christmas tree on wheels.”

  “It was Adam’s,” said Terence, indicating the sign.

  Bill Knight’s smile faded. “Oh, my,” he said. “Adam Petty. It’s odd, but I feel as if I knew him. My church is near the speedway where he was killed. I wish I could tell him how many people cried for him up there when it happened.”

  “I’d like to think he knows that,” said Sarah Nash.

  An hour later, and a few miles down the road, Shane McKee stood in a dimly lit entry foyer, beside the roped-off black number 3 car. He gazed down the dark and cavernous hallway, illuminated only by the faint glow of picture lights above each exhibit, and then he began to walk away from the sunshine of the entryway, and down the long dark hall of memories.

  The place looked more like church than church, he thought. The visitors were acting like it was church, too. Singly or in pairs, the visitors wandered down the hall with its cathedral ceilings and its glass-encased Earnhardt trophy collections. If they spoke at all, it was in whispers.